Downriver a sudden wash spills grubs, white worms, into the quick rush. Stones,
too, hurl into the fray, like infantry and horse soldiers out of bush. The rain
is gone overhill half a day and aches its echo on the earth. This, of course, is
my own war, this drive to be alone, separatist seeking shadows of the pine, the
cool, dark cells of old trees flattening like choice rooms by the banks, and the
phantom foe sleek as a jet under surface. He turns to watch my boots stumble on
the rock skelter laced with lichen and mossy strains. If he has laughter, it floats
away faint as photographs at the back end of an old man’s mind. I trust that
he laughs not nor cries in his world, that once he noses upstream, feels the power
gauging his flanks, knows the message burning like new stars in the sanctity where
his eyes dwell, he will know why I am in this shadowed recess:
says secret spawning
calls us from earth’s hot center
divining where rivers end
where the journey starts
says our rhythms merge
divining where rivers start
Master of several genres, Sheehan has been writing for a long time—eight
decades—and he has no plans to slow down. Hundreds of his short stories appear
online and in print venues, with nearly 400 of his Western stories alone in Rope
and Wire. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize 28 times. One of
his five short-story collections, The Westering, was nominated in 2012 for
the National Book Award, and one of his five poetry collections, Korean
Echoes, was nominated in 2011 for a Distinguished Military Award.
Sheehan served in the 31st Infantry Regiment in Korea in 1951, an experience that
forever changed his life and continues to inform his writing. Many of his stories
also include a special character: his home-town of Saugus, Massachusetts. In 1990,
he retired from Raytheon Corporation, after 35 years there as a writer and analyst.
